Scottish Greens
Scottish Green Party; won 8 Holyrood seats on 7 May 2026, confidence-and-supply route to Swinney.
Last refreshed: 22 May 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Can the Scottish Greens hold seven seats and coalition leverage in a Holyrood election they are contesting from opposition?
Timeline for Scottish Greens
Mentioned in: Green air comes out as governing begins
UK Local Elections 2026Mentioned in: Swinney's Section 30 ask, trigger missed
UK Local Elections 2026Swinney pushes Section 30, seven short
UK Local Elections 2026Mentioned in: Reform enters Holyrood on 17 MSPs
UK Local Elections 2026Mentioned in: SNP wins 58, below 65-seat trigger
UK Local Elections 2026What are the Scottish Greens 2026 manifesto promises?
Why did the Scottish Greens leave the SNP coalition?
How many seats do the Scottish Greens have in Holyrood?
Background
The Scottish Green Party contested the 2026 Holyrood election as a party of opposition after ending its government partnership with the SNP. Co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater led the party into the Bute House Agreement in 2021, entering government as junior Coalition partners for the first time in Scottish history. The agreement collapsed in April 2024 over the SNP's decision not to meet its climate targets under the Climate Change Act. The party published its 89-page manifesto on 14 April 2026 in Glasgow, co-launched by MSPs Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay, with headline policies including free bus travel, no new North Sea oil and gas licences, a Scottish wealth tax, and 40,000 green energy jobs.
On 7 May 2026, the Scottish Greens returned 8 Holyrood seats, their best-ever result by seat count. The standout result was Lorna Slater defeating Angus Robertson (SNP) in Edinburgh Central by 12,680 votes to 7,702, the Scottish Greens' second-ever Holyrood constituency seat and the second time the party has taken a seat from a senior SNP figure on the constituency vote. The 8-seat result gives the Greens a confidence-and-supply route to support an SNP minority government: the SNP-Green combined bloc of 73 seats clears the 65-seat majority threshold John Swinney cited for a 2028 independence referendum, even though the SNP itself fell seven seats short.
The IFS five-party sweep of April 2026 found the Scottish Greens, like all other Holyrood parties, unable to fully fund their manifesto commitments. Harvie publicly acknowledged this, saying the concept of a fully funded manifesto is misleading.